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ECCE HOMO 



BY 

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 



PORTLAND, MAINE 

SMITH & SALE, PRINTERS 

1911 



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COPYRIGHT 

T. N . F O U L I S 

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©CI.A292708 



ECCE HOMO 



THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NIETZSCHE 



PREFACE 



As it is my intention within a very short time to con- 
front my fellow-men with the very greatest demand 
that has ever yet been made upon them, it seems to 
me above all necessary to declare here who and what 
I am. As a matter of fact, this ought to be pretty well 
known already, for I have not "held my tongue" about 
myself. But the disparity which exists between the 
greatness of my task and the smallness of my contem- 
poraries, is revealed by the fact that people have 
neither heard me nor yet seen me. I live on my own 
self-made credit, and it is probably only a prejudice to 
suppose that I am alive at all. I do but require to 
speak to any one of the scholars who come to the 
Ober-Engadine in the summer in order to convince 
myself that I am not alive. . . . Under these circum- 
stances, it is a duty — and one against which my cus- 
tomary reserve, and to a still greater degree the pride 
of my instincts, rebel — to say : Listen! for I am such 
and such a person. For Heaven's sake do not confound 
me with any one else 1 



I am, for instance, in no wise a bogey man, or moral 
monster. On the contrary, I am the very opposite in 



4 PREFACE 

nature to the kind of man that has been honoured 
hitherto as virtuous. Between ourselves it seems to 
me that this is precisely a matter on which I may feel 
proud. I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, 
and I would prefer to be even a satyr than a saint. 
But just read this book ! Maybe I have here suc- 
ceeded in expressing this contrast in a cheerful and at 
the same time sympathetic manner — maybe this is the 
only purpose of the present work. 

The very last thing I should promise to accomplish 
would be to "improve" mankind. I do not set up any 
new idols ; may old idols only learn what it costs to 
have legs of clay. To overthrow idols (idols is the 
name I give to all ideals) is much more like my busi- 
ness. In proportion as an ideal world has been falsely 
assumed, reality has been robbed of its value, its 
meaning, and its truthfulness. . . . The "true world" 
and the "apparent world" — in plain English, the ficti- 
tious world and reality. . . . Hitherto the lie of the 
ideal has been the curse of reality ; by means of it the 
very source of mankind's instincts has become menda- 
cious and false ; so much so that those values have 
come to be worshipped which are the exact opposite of 
the ones which would ensure man's prosperity, his 
future, and his great right to a future. 



He who knows how to beathe in the air of my writ- 
ings is conscious that it is the air of the heights, that 
it is bracing. A man must be built for it, otherwise 
the chances are that it will chill him. The ice is near, 
the loneliness is terrible — but how serenely everything 



PREFACE 5 

lies in the sunshine ! how freely one can breathe ! how 
much, one feels, lies beneath one ! Philosophy, as I 
have understood it hitherto, is a voluntary retirement 
into regions of ice and mountain-peaks — the seeking- 
out of everything strange and questionable in exist- 
ence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality has set 
its ban. Through long experience, derived from such 
wanderings in forbidden country, I acquired an opinion 
very different from that which may seem generally 
desirable, of the causes which hitherto have led to 
men's moralising and idealising. The secret history 
of philosophers, the psychology of their great names, 
was revealed to me. How much truth can a certain 
mind endure ; how much truth can it dare ? — these 
questions became for me ever more and more the 
actual test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is 
not blindness ; error is cowardice. . . . Every con- 
quest, every step forward in knowledge, is the outcome 
of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of cleanli- 
ness towards one's self. I do not refute ideals ; all I 
do is to draw on my gloves in their presence. . . . 
Nitimur in vetitum : with this device my philosophy 
will one day be victorious ; for that which has hitherto 
been most stringently forbidden is, without exception. 
Truth. 



In my lifework, my Zarathustra holds a place apart. 
With it, I gave my fellow-men the greatest gift that has 
ever been bestowed upon them. This book, the voice 
of which speaks out across the ages, is not only the 
loftiest book on earth, literally the book of mountain 



b PREFACE 

air, — the whole phenomenon, mankind, lies at an incal- 
culable distance beneath it, — but it is also the deepest 
book, born of the inmost abundance of truth ; an inex- 
haustible well, into which no pitcher can be lowered 
without coming up again laden with gold and with 
goodness. Here it is not a "prophet" who speaks, 
one of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and Will to 
Power, whom men call founders of religions. If a man 
would not do a sad wrong to his wisdom, he must above 
all give proper heed to the tones — the halcyonic tones 
— that fall from the lips of Zarathustra : — 

"The most silent words are harbingers of the storm ; 
thoughts that come on dove's feet lead the world. 

"The figs fall from the trees ; they are good and 
sweet, and, when they fall, their red skins are rent. 
"A north wind am I unto ripe figs. 
"Thus, like figs, do these precepts drop down to 
you, my friends ; now drink their juice and their sweet 
pulp. 

"It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and after- 
noon." 

No fanatic speaks to you here; this is not a "ser- 
mon ; " no faith is demanded in these pages. From 
out an infinite treasure of light and well of joy, drop 
by drop, my words fall out — a slow and gentle gait in 
the cadence of these discourses. Such things can 
reach only the most elect; it is a rare privilege to be 
a listener here ; not every one who likes can have ears 
to hear Zarathustra. Is not Zarathustra, because of 
these things, a seducer 1 . . . But what, indeed, does 
he himself say, when for the first time he goes back to 
his solitude? Just the reverse of that which any 
"Sage," "Saint," "Saviour of the world," and other 



PREFACE 7 

decadents would say. . . . Not only his words, but he 
himself is other than they. 

"Alone do I now go, my disciples ! Get ye also 
hence, and alone ! Thus would I have it. 

"Verily, I beseech you : take your leave of me and 
arm yourselves against Zarathustra ! And better still, 
be ashamed of him 1 Maybe he hath deceived you. 

"The knight of knowledge must be able not only to 
love his enemies, but also to hate his friends. 

"The man who remaineth a pupil requiteth his 
teacher but ill. And why would ye not pluck at my 
wreath ? 

" Ye honour me ; but what if your reverence should 
one day break down ? Take heed, lest a statue crush 
you. 

"Ye say ye believe in Zarathustra ? But of what 
account is Zarathustra ? Ye are my believers : but of 
what account are all believers ? 

"Ye had not yet sought yourselves when ye found 
me. Thus do all believers ; therefore is all believing 
worth so little. 

"Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves ; and 
only when ye have all denied me will I come back unto 
you." 

Friedrich Nietzsche. 



On this perfect day, when everything is ripening, and 
not only the grapes are getting brown, a ray of sun- 
shine has fallen on my life : I looked behind me, I 
looked before me, and never have I seen so many 
good things all at once. Not in vain have I buried 
my four-and-fortieth year to-day ; I had the right to 
bury it — that in it which still had life, has been saved 
and is immortal. The first book of the Transvaluation 
of all Values, The Songs of Zarathustra, The Twilight 
of the Idols, my attempt to philosophise with the ham- 
mer — all these things are the gift of this year, and 
even of its last quarter. How could I help being thank- 
ful to the whole of my life ? 

That is why I am now going to tell myself the story 
of my life. 



ECCE HOMO 



HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE IS 



WHY I AM SO WISE 



THe happiness of my existence, its unique character 
perhaps, consists in its fatefulness: to speak in a 
riddle, as my own father I am already dead, as my 
own mother I still live and grow old. This double 
origin, taken as it were from the highest and lowest 
rungs of the ladder of life, at once a decadent and a 
beginning, this, if anything, explains that neutrality, 
that freedom from partisanship in regard to the general 
problem of existence, which perhaps distinguishes me. 
To the first indications of ascending or of descending 
life my nostrils are more sensitive than those of any man 
that has yet lived. In this domain I am a master to my 
backbone — I know both sides, for I am both sides. 
My father died in his six-and-thirtieth year : he was 
delicate, lovable, and morbid, like one who is preor- 
dained simply to pay a flying visit — a gracious reminder 
of life rather than life itself. In the same year that 
his life declined mine also declined : in my six-and- 
thirtieth year I reached the lowest point in my vitality, 
— I still lived, but my eyes could distinguish nothing 
that lay three paces away from me, At that time — it 
was the year 1879 — I resigned my professorship at 
Bale, lived through the summer like a shadow in St. 
Moritz, and spent the following winter, the most sun- 
less of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg. This was 



lO ECCE HOMO 

my lowest ebb. During this period I wrote The Wan- 
derer and His Shadow. Without a doubt I was con- 
versant with shadows then. The winter that followed, 
my first winter in Genoa, brought forth that sweetness 
and spirituality which is almost inseparable from ex- 
treme poverty of blood and muscle, in the shape of 
The Dawn of Day. The perfect lucidity and cheer- 
fulness, the intellectual exuberance even, that this work 
reflects, coincides, in my case, not only with the most 
profound physiological weakness, but also with an 
excess of suffering. In the midst of the agony of a 
headache which lasted three days, accompanied by 
violent nausea, I was possessed of most singular dia- 
lectical clearness, and in absolutely cold blood I then 
thought out things, for which, in my more healthy 
moments, I am not enough of a climber, not sufficiently 
supple, not sufficiently cold. My readers perhaps 
know to what extent I consider dialectic a symptom of 
decadence, as, for instance, in the most famous of all 
cases — the case of Socrates. All the morbid disturb- 
ances of the intellect, even that semi-stupor which 
accompanies fever, have, unto this day, remained com- 
pletely unknown to me ; and for my first information 
concerning their nature and frequency, I was obliged 
to have recourse to the learned works which have been 
compiled on the subject. My circulation is slow. No 
one has ever been able to detect fever in me. A doc- 
tor who treated me for some time as a nerve patient 
finally declared : "No ! there is nothing wrong with 
your nerves, it is simply I who am nervous,'' It has' 
been absolutely impossible to ascertain any local 
degeneration in me, nor any organic stomach trouble, 
however much I may have suffered from profound 



WHY I AM SO WISE II 

weakness of the gastric system as the result of general 
exhaustion. Even my eye trouble, which sometimes 
approached so parlously near to blindness, was only 
an effect and not a cause ; for, whenever my general 
vital condition improved, my power of vision also 
increased. Having admitted all this, do I need to say 
that I am experienced in questions of decadence ? I 
know them inside and out. Even that filigree art of 
prehension and comprehension in general, that feeling 
for delicate shades of difference, that psychology of 
"seeing through brick walls," and whatever else I may 
be able to do, was first learnt then, and is the specific 
gift of that period during which everything in me was 
subtilised, — observation itself, together with all the 
organs of observation. To look upon healthier con- 
cepts and values from the standpoint of the sick, and 
conversely to look down upon the secret work of 
the instincts of decadence from the standpoint of him 
who is laden and self-reliant with the richness of life — 
this has been my longest exercise, my principal experi- 
ence. If in anything at all, it was in this that I 
became a master. To-day my hand knows the trick, I 
now have the knack of reversing perspectives : the first 
reason perhaps why a Transvaluatioti of all Values has 
been possible to me alone. 



For, apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am 
also the reverse of such a creature. Among other 
things my proof of this is, that I always instinctively, 
select the proper remedy when my spiritual or bodily 



12 ECCE HOMO 

health is bad ; whereas the decadent, as such, invaria- 
bly chooses those remedies which are bad for him. 
As a whole I was sound, but in certain details I was a 
decadent. That energy with which I sentenced my- 
self to absolute solitude, and to a severance from all 
those conditions in life to which I had grown accus- 
tomed ; my discipline of myself, and my refusal to 
allow myself to be pampered, to be tended hand and 
foot, and to be doctored — all this betrays the absolute 
certainty of my instincts respecting what at that time 
was most needful to me. I placed myself in my own 
hands, I restored myself to health: the first condition 
of success in such an undertaking, as every physiolo- 
gist will admit, is that at bottom a man should be 
sound. An intrinsically morbid nature cannot become 
healthy. On the other hand, to an intrinsically sound 
nature, illness may even constitute a powerful stimulus 
to life, to a surplus of life. It is in this light that I 
now regard the long period of illness that I endured : 
it seemed as if I had discovered life afresh, my own 
self included. I tasted all good things and even trifles 
in a way in which it was not easy for others to taste 
them — out of my Will to Health and to Life I made 
my philosophy. . . . For this should be thoroughly 
understood ; it was during those years in which my 
vitality reached its lowest point that I ceased from 
being a pessimist : the instinct of self-recovery forbade 
my holding to a philosophy of poverty and despera- 
tion. Now, by what signs are Nature's lucky strokes 
recognised among men? They are recognised by the 
fact that any such lucky stroke gladdens our senses ; 
that he is carved from one integral block, which is 
hard, sweet, and fragrant as well. He enjoys that 



WHY 1 AM SO WISE 13 

only which is good for him ; his pleasure, his desire, 
ceases when the limits of that which is good for him 
are overstepped. He divines remedies for injuries ; 
he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own 
advantage; that which does not kill him makes him 
stronger. He instinctively gathers his material from 
all he sees, hears, and experiences. He is a selective 
principle ; he rejects much. He is always in his own 
company, whether his intercourse be with books, with 
men, or with natural scenery ; he honours the things 
he chooses, the things he acknowledges, the things he 
trusts. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with 
that tardiness which long caution and deliberate pride 
have bred in him — he tests the approaching stimulus ; 
he would not dream of meeting it half-way. He be- 
lieves neither in "ill-luck" nor "guilt;" he can digest 
himself and others ; he knows how to forget — he is 
strong enough to make everything turn to his own 
advantage. 

Lo then ! I am the very reverse of a decadent, for 
he whom I have just described is none other than 
myself. 



This double thread of experiences, this means of 
access to two worlds that seem so far asunder, finds 
in every detail its counterpart in my own nature — I 
am my own double : I have a "second" sight, as well 
as a first. And perhaps I also have a third sight. 
By the very nature of my origin I was allowed an out- 
look beyond all merely local, merely national and lim- 
ited horizons ; it required no effort on my part to be a 



14 ECCE HOMO 

"good European." On the other hand, I am perhaps 
more German than modern Germans — mere Imperial 
Germans — can hope to be,— I, the last anti-political 
German. Be this as it may, my ancestors were Polish 
noblemen : it is owing to them that I have so much 
race instinct in my blood — who knows ? perhaps even 
the liberum veto* When I think of the number of 
times in my travels that I have been accosted as a 
Pole, even by Poles themselves, and how seldom I 
have been taken for. a German, it seems to me as if I 
belonged to those only who have a sprinkling of Ger- 
man in them. But my mother, Franziska Oehler, is at 
any rate something very German ; as is also my pater- 
nal grandmother, Erdmuthe Krause. The latter spent 
the whole of her youth in good old Weimar, not with- 
out coming into contact with Goethe's circle. Her 
brother, Krause, the Professor of Theology in Konigs- 
berg, was called to the post of General Superintendent 
at Weimar after Herder's death. It is not unlikely 
that her mother, my great grandmother, is mentioned 
in young Goethe's diary under the name of "Muthgen." 
She married twice, and her second husband was Su- 
perintendent Nietzsche of Eilenburg. In 1813, the 
year of the great war, when Napoleon with his general 
staff entered Eilenburg on the loth of October, she 
gave birth to a son. As a daughter of Saxony she 
was a great admirer of Napoleon, and maybe that I am 
so still. My father, born in 18 13, died in 1849. P''^" 

* The right which every Polish deputy, whether a nobleman 
or a commoner, possessed of forbidding the passing of any 
measure by the Diet, was called in Poland the libertim veto (in 
Polish nie pozwalam)y and brought all legislation to a standstill. 
— Tr. 



WHY I AM SO WISE 1 5 

vious to taking over the pastorship of the parish of 
Rocken, not far from Liitzen, he lived for some years 
at the Castle of Altenburg, where he had charge of the 
education of the four princesses. His pupils are the 
Queen of Hanover, the Grand-Duchess Constantine, 
the Grand-Duchess of Oldenburg, and the Princess 
Theresa of Saxe-Altenburg. He was full of loyal 
respect for the Prussian King, Frederick William the 
Fourth, from whom he obtained his living at Rocken ; 
the events of 1848 saddened him extremely. As I 
was born on 15th October, the birthday of the king 
above mentioned, I naturally received the HohenzoU- 
ern names of Frederick William. There was at all 
events one advantage in the choice of this day : my 
birthday throughout the whole of my childhood was a 
day of public rejoicing. I regard it as a great privi- 
lege to have had such a father : it even seems to me 
that this embraces all that I can claim in the matter of 
privileges — life, the great yea to life, excepted. What 
I owe to him above all is this, that I do not need any 
special intention, but merely a little patience, in order 
involuntarily to enter a world of higher and more deli- 
cate things. There I am at home, there alone does 
my inmost passion become free. The fact that I had 
to pay for this privilege almost with my life, certainly 
does not make it a bad bargain. In order to under- 
stand even a little of my Zarathiistra, perhaps a man 
must be situated and constituted very much as I am 
myself — with one foot beyond the realm of the living. 



I have never understood the art of arousing ill-feel- 
ing against myself, — this is also something for which I 



1 6 • ECCE HOMO 

have to thank my incomparable father, — even when it 
seemed to me highly desirable to do so. However 
un-Christian it may seem, I do not even bear any ill- 
feeling towards myself. Turn my life about as you 
may, you will find but seldom — perhaps indeed only 
once — any trace of some one's having shown me ill- 
will. You might perhaps discover, however, too many 
traces of good-wiW. . . . My experiences even with 
those on whom every other man has burnt his fingers, 
speak without exception in their favour ; I tame every 
bear, I can make even clowns behave decently. Dur- 
ing the seven years in which I taught Greek to the 
sixth form of the College at Bale, I never had occasion 
to administer a punishment; the laziest youths were 
diligent in my class. The unexpected has always 
found me equal to it ; I must be unprepared in order 
to keep my self-command. 

****** 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 

Roughly speaking, I seized two famous and, there- 
tofore, completely undefined types by the forelock, 
after the manner in which one seizes opportunities, 
simply in order to speak my mind on certain questions, 
in order to have a few more formulas, signs, and means 
of expression at my disposal. Indeed I actually sug- 
gest this, with most unearthly sagacity, on page 183 
of Schopenhauer as Educator. Plato made use of 
Socrates in the same way — that is to say, as a cipher 
for Plato. Now that, from some distance, I can look 
back upon the conditions of which these essays are the 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 17 

testimony, I would be loth to deny that they refer sim- 
ply to me. The essay Wagner in Bayreuth is a vision 
of my own future ; on the other hand, my most secret 
history, my development, is written down in Schopen- 
hauer as Educator. But, above all, the vow I made ! 
What I am to-day, the place I now hold — at a height 
from which I speak no longer with words but with 
thunderbolts — oh, how far I was from all this in those 
days ! But I saw the land — I did not deceive myself 
for one moment as to the way, the sea, the danger — 
and success ! The great calm in promising, this happy 
prospect of a future which must not remain only a 
promise ! — In this book every word has been lived, 
profoundly and intimately ; the most painful things are 
not lacking in it ; it contains words which are posi- 
tively running with blood. But a wind of great free- 
dom blows over the whole ; even its wounds do not 
constitute an objection. As to what I understand by 
being a philosopher, — that is to say, a terrible explo- 
sive in the presence of which everything is in danger ; 
as to how I sever my idea of the philosopher by miles 
from that other idea of him which includes even a 
Kant, not to speak of the academic "ruminators" and 
other professors of philosophy, — concerning all these 
things this essay provides invaluable information, 
even granting that at bottom, it is not "Schopenhauer 
as Educator" but "Nietzsche as Educator," who speaks 
his sentiments in it. Considering that, in those days, 
my trade was that of a scholar, and perhaps, also, that 
I understood my trade, the piece of austere scholar 
psychology which suddenly makes its appearance in 
this essay is not without importance : it expresses the 
feeling of distance, and my profound certainty regard- 



1 8 ECCE HOMO 

ing what was my real life-task, and what were merely 
means, intervals, and accessary work to me. My wis- 
dom consists in my having been many things, and in 
many places, in order to become one thing — in order 
to be able to attain to one thing. It was part of my 
fate to be a scholar for a while. 



"Human, all-too-Human" 



Human, all-too-Human, with its two sequels, is the 
memorial of a crisis. It is called a book for free spir- 
its : almost every sentence in it is the expression of a 
triumph — by means of it I purged myself of everything 
in me which was foreign to my nature. Idealism is 
foreign to me : the title of the book means : "Where 
ye see ideal things I see — human, alas ! all-too-human 
things ! "... I know men better. The word "free 
spirit" in this book must not be understood as anything 
else than a spirit that has become free, that has once 
more taken possession of itself. My tone, the pitch 
of my voice, has completely changed ; the book will be 
thought clever, cool, and at times both hard and 
scornful. A certain spirituality, of noble taste, seems 
to be ever struggling to dominate a passionate torrent 
at its feet. In this respect there is some sense in the 
fact that it was the hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's 
death that served, so to speak, as an excuse for the 
publication of the book as early as 1878. For Vol- 
taire, as the opposite of every one who wrote after 
him, was above all a grandee of the intellect : pre- 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 1 9 

cisely what I am also. The name of Voltaire on one 
of my writings — that was verily a step forward — in my 
direction. . . . Looking into this book a little more 
closely, you perceive a pitiless spirit who knows all the 
secret hiding-places in which ideals are wont to skulk 
— where they find their dungeons, and, as it were, 
their last refuge. With a torch in my hand, the light 
of which is not by any means a flickering one, I il- 
luminate this nether world with beams that cut like 
blades. It is war, but war without powder and smoke, 
without warlike attitudes, without pathos and contorted 
limbs — all these things would still be "idealism." One 
error after the other is quietly laid upon ice ; the ideal 
is not refuted — it freezes. Here, for instance, "genius" 
freezes ; round the corner the "saint" freezes ; under a 
thick icicle the "hero" freezes ; and in the end "faith" 
itself freezes. So-called "conviction" and also "pity" 
are considerably cooled — and almost everywhere the 
" thing in itself" is freezing to death. 



This book was begun during the first musical festival 
at Bayreuth ; a feeling of profound strangeness towards 
everything that surrounded me there, is one of its first 
conditions. He who has any notion of the visions 
which even at that time had flitted across my path, will 
be able to guess what I felt when one day I came to 
my senses in Bayreuth. It was just as if I had been 
dreaming. Where on earth was I ? I recognised noth- 
ing that I saw; I scarcely recognised Wagner. It was 
in vain that I called up reminiscences. Tribschen — 
remote island of bliss : not the shadow of a resem- 



2 ECCE HOMO 

blance ! The incomparable days devoted to the laying 
of the first stone, the small group of the initiated who 
celebrated them, and who were far from lacking fingers 
for the handling of delicate things : not the shadow of 
a resemblance! What had happened? — Wagner had 
been translated into German ! The Wagnerite had 
become master of Wagner! — German art! the German 
master ! German beer ! . . . We who know only too 
well the kind of refined artists and cosmopolitanism in 
taste, to which alone Wagner's art can appeal, were 
beside ourselves at the sight of Wagner bedecked with 
German virtues. I think I know the Wagnerite, I 
have experienced three generations of them, from 
Brendel of blessed memory, who confounded Wagner 
with Hegel, to the "idealists" of the Bayreiith Gazette, 
who confounded Wagner with themselves, — I have 
been the recipient of every kind of confession about 
Wagner, from "beautiful souls." My kingdom for just 
one intelligent word ! — In very truth, a blood-curdling 
company ! Nohl, Pohl, and Kohl,"^ and others of their 
kidney to infinity ! There was not a single abortion 
that was lacking among them — no, not even the anti- 
Semite. — Poor Wagner ! Into whose hands had he 
fallen ? If only he had fallen among swine ! But 
among Germans ! Some day, for the edification of 
posterity, one ought really to have a genuine Bay- 
reuthian stuffed, or, better still, preserved in spirit, — 
for it is precisely "spirit" that is lacking in this quarter, 
— with this inscription at the foot of the jar : "A sam- 
ple of the spirit whereon the 'German Empire' was 

* Nohl and Pohl were both writers on music ; Kohl, however, 
which literally means cabbage, is a slang expression, denoting 
superior nonsense. — Te. 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS' 2 1 

founded." . . . But enough ! In the middle of the 
festivities I suddenly packed my trunk and left the 
place for a few weeks, despite the fact that a charming 
Parisian lady sought to comfort me ; I excused myself 
to Wagner simply by means of a fatalistic telegram 
In a Httle spot called KHngenbrunn, deeply buried in the 
recesses of the Bohmerwald, I carried my melancholy 
and my contempt of Germans about with me like an 
illness — and, from time to time, under the general title 
of "The Ploughshare," I wrote a sentence or two down 
in my note-book, nothing but severe psychological 
stuff, which it is possible may have found its way into 
Human, alltoo-Htiman. 



That which had taken place in me, then, was not 
only a breach with Wagner — I was suffering from a 
general aberration of my instincts, of which a mere 
isolated blunder, whether it were Wagner or my pro- 
fessorship at Bale, was nothing more than a symptom. 
I was seized with a fit of impatience with myself ; I 
saw that it was high time that I should turn my 
thoughts upon my own lot. In a trice I realised, with 
appalling clearness, how much time had already been 
squandered — how futile and how senseless my whole 
existence as a philologist appeared by the side of my 
life-task. I was ashamed of this false modesty. . . . 
Ten years were behind me, during which, to tell the 
truth, the nourishment of my spirit had been at a 
standstill, during which I had added not a single use- 
ful fragment to my knowledge, and had forgotten 
countless things in the pursuit of a hotch-potch of dry- 



22 ECCE HOMO 

as-dust scholarship. To crawl with meticulous care 
and short-sighted eyes through old Greek metricians — 
that is what I had come to ! . . . Moved to pity I saw 
myself quite thin, quite emaciated : realities were only 
too plainly absent from my stock of knowledge, and 
what the "idealities" were worth the devil alone knows ! 
A positively burning thirst overcame me : and from 
that time forward I have done literally nothing else 
than study physiology, medicine, and natural science — 
I even returned to the actual study of history only 
when my life-task compelled me to. It was at that 
time, too, that I first divined the relation between an 
instinctively repulsive occupation, a so-called vocation, 
which is the last thing to which one is "called," and 
that need of lulling a feeling of emptiness and hunger, 
by means of an art which is a narcotic — by means of 
Wagner's art, for instance. After looking carefully 
about me, I have discovered that a large number of 
young men are all in the same state of distress : one 
kind of unnatural practice perforce leads to another. 
In Germany, or rather, to avoid all ambiguity, in the 
Empire,* only too many are condemned to determine 
their choice too soon, and then to pine away beneath 
a burden that they can no longer throw off. . . , Such 
creatures crave for Wagner as for an opiate, — they are 
thus able to forget themselves, to be rid of themselves 
for a moment. . . . What am I saying ! — for five or 
six hours. 



* Needless to say, Nietzsche distinguishes sharply between 
Bismarckian Germany and that other Germany — Austria, Swit- 
zerland, and the Baltic Provinces — where the German language 
is also spoken. — Tr. 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 23 



At this time my instincts turned resolutely against 
any further yielding or following on my part, and any 
further misunderstanding of myself. Every kind of 
life, the most Cinfavourable circumstances, illness, pov- 
erty — anything seemed to me preferable to that undig- 
nified "selfishness" into which I had fallen ; in the first 
place, thanks to my ignorance and youth, and in which 
I had afterwards remained owing to laziness — the so- 
called "sense of duty." At this juncture there came 
to my help, in a way that I cannot sufficiently admire, 
and precisely at the right time, that evil heritage which 
I derive from my father's side of the family, and which, 
at bottom, is no more than a predisposition to die 
young. Illness slowly liberated me from the toils, it 
spared me any sort of sudden breach, any sort of vio- 
lent and offensive step. At that time I lost not a 
particle of the good will of others, but rather added to 
my store. Illness likewise gave me the right com- 
pletely to reverse my mode of life ; it not only allowed, 
it actually commanded, me to forget ; it bestowed upon 
me the necessity of lying still, of having leisure, of 
waiting, and of exercising patience. . . . But all this 
means thinking ! . . . The state of my eyes alone put 
an end to all bookwormishness, or, in plain English — 
philology : I was thus delivered from books ; for years 
I ceased from reading, and this was the greatest boon 
I ever conferred upon myself ! That nethermost self, 
which was, as it were, entombed, and which had grown 
dumb because it had been forced to listen perpetually 
to other selves (for that is what reading means !), 
slowly awakened ; at first it was shy and doubtful, but 



24 ECCE HOMO 

at last it spoke again. Never have I rejoiced more 
over my condition than during the sickest and most 
painful moments of my life. You have only to exam- 
ine The Dawn of Day, or, perhaps, The Wanderer and 
his Shadow^ in order to understand what this "return 
to myself" actually meant; in itself it was the highest 
kind of recovery ! . . . My cure was simply the result 
of it. 



Human, ail-too- Human, this monument of a course 
of vigorous self-discipline, by means of which I put an 
abrupt end to all the "Superior Bunkum," "Idealism," 
"Beautiful Feelings," and other effeminacies that had 
percolated into my being, was written principally in 
Sorrento ; it was finished and given definite shape dur- 
ing a winter at Bale, under conditions far less favour- 
able than those in Sorrento. Truth to tell, it was 
Peter Gast, at that time a student at the University of 
B^le, and a devoted friend of mine, who was respon- 
sible for the book. With my head wrapped in band- 
ages, and extremely painful, I dictated while he wrote 
and corrected as he went along — to be accurate, he 
was the real composer, whereas I was only the author. 
When the completed book ultimately reached me, — to 
the great surprise of the serious invalid I then was, — 
I sent, among others, two copies to Bayreuth. Thanks 
to a miraculous flash of intelligence on the part of 
chance, there reached me precisely at the same time a 
splendid copy of the Parsifal text, with the following 
inscription from Wagner's pen: "To his dear friend 

* Htcman, ail-too- Human, Part II. in this edition. — Tr. 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 25 

Friedrich Nietzsche, from Richard Wagner, Ecclesias- 
tical Councillor." At this crossing of the two books I 
seemed to hear an ominous note. Did it not sound as 
if two swords had crossed ? At all events we both felt 
this was so, for each of us remained silent. At about 
this time the first Bayreuth Pamphlets appeared: and 
I then understood the move on my part for which it 
was high time. Incredible! Wagner had become 
pious. 



My attitude to myself at that time (1876), and the 
unearthly certitude with which I grasped my life-task 
and all its world-historic consequences, is well revealed 
throughout the book, but more particularly in one very 
significant passage, despite the fact that, with my 
instinctive cunning, I once more circumvented the use 
of the little word "I," — not however, this time, in order 
to shed world-historic glory on the names of Schopen- 
hauer and Wagner, but on that of another of my friends, 
the excellent Dr. Paul Ree — fortunately much too 
acute a creature to be deceived — others were less 
subtle. Among my readers I have a number of hope- 
less people, the typical German professor for instance, 
who can always be recognised from the fact that, judg- 
ing from the passage in question, he feels compelled to 
regard the whole book as a sort of superior Reealism. 
As a matter of fact it contradicts five or six of my 
friend's utterances : only read the introduction to The 
Genealogy of Morals on this question. — The passage 
above referred to reads : "What, after all, is the prin- 
cipal axiom to which the boldest and coldest thinker, 



26 ECCE HOMO 

the author of the book On the Origin of Moral Sensa- 
tions'^ (read Nietzsche, the first Immoralist), "has 
attained by means of his incisive and decisive analysis 
of human actions ? 'The moral man,' he says, 'is no 
nearer to the intelligible (metaphysical) world than is 
the physical man, for there is no intelligible world,' 
This theory, hardened and sharpened under the 
hammer-blow of historical knowledge" (read The 
Trans valuation of all Values), "may some time or 
other, perhaps in some future period, — 1890! — serve 
as the axe which is applied to the root of the 'metaphy- 
sical need' of man, — whether more as a blessing than 
a curse to his general welfare it is not easy to say ; 
but in any case as a theory with the most important 
consequences, at once fruitful and terrible, and look- 
ing into the world with that Janus-face which all great 
knowledge possesses,"* 



"The Dawn of Day : 
Thoughts about Morality as a Prejudice" 



With this book I open my campaign against morality. 
Not that it is at all redolent of powder — you will find 
quite other and much nicer smells in it, provided that 
you have any keenness in your nostrils. There is 
nothing either of light or of heavy artillery in its com- 
position, and if its general end be a negative one, its 

* Human, all-too-Human, vol. i. Aph. 37. 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 27 

means are not so — means out of which the end follows 
like a logical conclusion, not like a cannon-shot. And 
if the reader takes leave of this book with a feeling of 
timid caution in regard to everything which has hither- 
to been honoured and even worshipped under the 
name of morality, it does not alter the fact that there 
is not one negative word, not one attack, and not one 
single piece of malice in the whole work — on the con- 
trary, it lies in the sunshine, smooth and happy, like a 
marine animal, basking in the sun between two rocks. 
For, after all, I was this marine animal : almost every 
sentence in the book was thought out, or rather caught, 
among that medley of rocks in the neighbourhood of 
Genoa, where I lived quite alone, and exchanged 
secrets with the ocean. Even to this day, when by 
chance I happen to turn over the leaves of this book, 
almost every sentence seems to me like a hook by 
means of which I draw something incomparable out of 
the depths ; its whole skin quivers with delicate shud- 
ders of recollection. This book is conspicuous for no 
little art in gently catching things which whisk rapidly 
and silently away, moments which I call godlike 
lizards — not with the cruelty of that young Greek god 
who simply transfixed the poor little beast ; but never- 
theless with something pointed — with a pen. "There 
are so many dawns which have not yet shed their 
light" — this Indian maxim is written over the doorway 
of this book. Where does its author seek that new 
morning, that delicate red, as yet undiscovered, with 
which another day — ah I a whole series of days, a 
whole world of new days ! — will begin ? In the Trans- 
valuation of all Values, in an emancipation from all 
moral values, in a saying of yea, and in an attitude of 



28 ECCE HOMO 

trust, to all that which hitherto has been forbidden, 
despised, and damned. This yea-saying book projects 
its light, its love, its tenderness, over all evil things^ it 
restores to them their soul, their clear conscience, and 
their superior right and privilege to exist on earth. 
Morality is not assailed, it simply ceases to be con- 
sidered. This book closes with the word "or ?" — it is 
the only book which closes with an "or ?". 



My life-task is to prepare for humanity one supreme 
moment in which it can come to its senses, a Great 
Noon in which it will turn its gaze backwards and 
forwards, in which it will step from under the yoke of 
accident and of priests, and for the first time set the 
question of the Why and Wherefore of humanity as a 
whole — this life-task naturally follows out of the con- 
viction that mankind does not get on the right road of 
its own accord, that it is by no means divinely ruled, 
but rather that it is precisely under the cover of its 
most holy valuations that the instinct of negation, of 
corruption, and of degeneration has held such a seduc- 
tive sway. The question concerning the origin of 
moral valuations is therefore a matter of the highest 
importance to me because it determines the future of 
mankind. The demand made upon us to believe that 
everything is really in the best hands, that a certain 
book, the Bible, gives us the definite and comforting 
assurance that there is a Providence that wisely rules 
the fate of man, — when translated back into reality 
amounts simply to this, namely, the will to stifle the 
truth which maintains the reverse of all this, which is 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 29 

that hitherto man has been in the worst possible hands, 
and that he has been governed by the physiologically 
botched, the men of cunning and burning revengeful- 
ness, and the so-called "saints" — those slanderers of 
the world and traducers of humanity. The definite 
proof of the fact that the priest (including the priest 
in disguise, the philosopher) has become master, not 
only within a certain limited religious community, but 
everywhere, and that the morality of decadence, the 
will to nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be 
found in this : that altruism is now an absolute value, 
and egoism is regarded with hostility everywhere. He 
who disagrees with me on this point, I regard as 
infected. But all the world disagrees with me. To a 
physiologist a like antagonism between values admits 
of no doubt. If the most insignificant organ within 
the body neglects however slightly to assert with 
absolute certainty its self-preservative powers, its 
recuperative claims, and its egoism, the whole system 
degenerates. The physiologist insists upon the removal 
of degenerated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for 
such parts, and has not the smallest feeling of pity for 
them. But the desire of the priest is precisely the 
degeneration of the whole of mankind ; hence his 
preservation of that which is degenerate — this is what 
his dominion costs humanity. What meaning have 
those lying concepts, those handmaids of morality, 
"Soul," "Spirit," "Free will," "God," if their aim is not 
the physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnestness 
is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-preserva- 
tion and an increase of bodily energy, /. e. at an increase 
of life ; when anaemia is raised to an ideal and the con- 
tempt of the body is construed as "the salvation of the 



30 ECCE HOMO 

soul," what is all this if it is not a recipe for decadence ? 
Loss of ballast, resistance offered to natural instincts, 
selfishness, in fact — this is what has hitherto been 
known as morality. With The Dawn of Day I first 
engaged in a struggle against the morality of self- 
renunciation. 

"Joyful Wisdom : 
La Gaya Scienza" 



Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound, but 
clear and kindly. The same applies once more and 
in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza: in almost 
every sentence of this book, profundity and playful- 
ness go gently hand in hand. A verse which expresses 
my gratitude for the most wonderful month of January 
which I have ever lived — the whole book is a gift — 
sufficiently reveals the abysmal depths from which 
"wisdom" has here become joyful. 

"Thou who with cleaving fiery lances 
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free, 
Till with a rush and a roar it advances 
To enter with glorious hoping the sea : 
Brighter to see, and purer ever, 
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint, 
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour, 
January, thou beauteous saint ! "* 

Who can be in any doubt as to what "glorious hop- 
ing" means here, when he has realised the diamond 

♦Translated iox Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 3 1 

beauty of the first of Zarathustra's words as they 
appear in a glow of light at the close of the fourth 
book ? Or when he reads the granite sentences at the 
end of the third book, where in a fate for all times is first 
given a formula ? The songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird, 
which, for the most part, were written in Sicily, remind 
me quite forcibly of that Provencal notion of ^^Gaya 
Scienza,''^ of that union of singer, knight arid free spirit, 
which distinguishes that wonderfully early culture of 
the Provencals from all doubtful cultures. The last 
poem of all, "To the Mistral," — an exuberant dance 
song in which, if you please, the new spirit dances 
freely upon the corpse of morality, — is a perfect Pro- 
ven^alism. 

"Thus Spake Zarathustra : 
A Book for All and None" 



I now wish to relate the history of Zarathustra. 
The fundamental idea of the work, the Eternal Recur- 
rence, the highest formula of a Yea-saying to life that 
can ever be attained, was first conceived in the month 
of August 1881. I made a note of the idea on a 
sheet of paper, with the postcript : "Six thousand feet 
beyond man and time." That day I happened to be 
wandering through the woods alongside of the Lake of 
Silvaplana, and I halted not far from Surlei, beside a 
huge rock that towered aloft like a pyramid. 



32 ECCE HOMO 

"I walk among men as among fragments of the 
future : of that future which I see. 

"And all my creativeness and effort is but this, that 
I may be able to think and recast all these fragments 
and riddles and dismal accidents into one piece. 

"And how could I bear to be a man, if man were 
not also a poet, a riddle reader, and a redeemer of 
chance ! 

"To redeem all the past, and to transform 'it was' , 
into 'thus would I have it' — that alone would be my 
salvation !" 

In another passage he defines as strictly as possible 
what to him alone "man" can be, — not a subject for 
love nor yet for pity — Zarathustra became master even 
of his loathing of man : man is to him a thing unshaped, 
raw material, an ugly stone that needs the sculptors' 
chisel. 

"No longer to will, no longer to value, no longer to 
create ! Oh, that this great weariness may never be 
mine ! 

"Even in the lust of knowledge, I feel only the joy 
of my will to beget and to grow ; and if there be inno- 
cence in my knowledge, it is because my procreative 
will is in it. 

"Away from God and gods did this will lure me : 
what would there be to create if there were gods ! 

" But to man doth it ever drive me anew, my burn- 
ing, creative will. Thus driveth it the hammer to the 
stone. 

"Alas, ye men, within the stone there sleepeth an 
image for me, the image of all my dreams ! Alas, that 
it should have to sleep in the hardest and ugliest 
stone ! 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS ^^ 

'■'■N^ow rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prisori. 
From the stone the fragments fly : what 's that to me ? 

"I will finish it : for a shadow came unto me — the 
stillest and lightest thing on earth once came unto me ! 

"The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a 
shadow. Alas, my brethren ! What are the — gods to 
me now !" 

Let me call attention to one last point of view. The 
line in italics is my pretext for this remark. A Diony- 
sian life-task needs the hardness of the hammer, and 
one of its first essentials is without doubt they'cy^ even 
of destruction. The command, "harden yourselves 1" 
and the deep conviction that all creators are hard, is 
the really distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature. 

"Beyond Good and Evil : The Prelude to a 
Philosophy of the Future" 

I 

My work for the years that followed was prescribed 
as distinctly as possible. Now that the yea-saying part 
of my life-task was accomplished, there came the turn 
of the negative portion, both in word and deed : the 
transvaluation of all values that had existed hitherto, 
the great war, — the conjuring-up of the day when the 
fatal outcome of the struggle would be decided. Mean- 
while, I had slowly to look about me for my peers, for 
those who, out of strength, would proffer me a helping 
hand in my work of destruction From that time 
onward, all my writings are so much bait : maybe I 
understand as much about fishing as most people ? If 
nothing was caught, it was not I who was at fault. 
There were no fish to come and bite. 



34 ECCE HOMO 



In all its essential points, this book (1886) is a crit- 
icism of modernity, embracing the modern sciences, 
arts, even politics, together with certain indications as 
to a type which would be the reverse of modern man, 
or as little like him as possible, a noble and yea-saying 
type. In this last respect the book is a school for gen- 
tlemen — the term gentleman being understood here in a 
much more spiritual and radical sense than it has 
implied hitherto. All those things of which the age is 
proud, — as, for instance, far-famed "objectivity," "sym- 
pathy with all that suffers," "the historical sense," with 
its subjection to foreign tastes, with its lying-in-the- 
diW'iA.h^ioxQ. petit s f aits, and the rage for science, — are 
shown to be the contradiction of the type recommended, 
and are regarded as almost ill-bred. If you remember 
that this book follows upon Zarathiistra, you may pos- 
sibly guess to what system of diet it owes its life. The 
eye which, owing to tremendous constraint, has become 
accustomed to see at a great distance, — Zarathustra is 
even more far-sighted than the Tsar, — is here forced 
to focus sharply that which is close at hand, the pres- 
ent time, the things that lie about him. In all the 
aphorisms and more particularly in the form of this 
book, the reader will find the same voluntary turning 
away from those instincts which made a Zarathustra a 
possible feat. Refinement in form, in aspiration, and 
in the art of keeping silent, are its more or less obvi- 
ous qualities ; psychology is handled with deliberate 
hardness and cruelty, — the whole book does not con- 
tain one single good-natured word. . . . All this sort 
of thing refreshes a man. Who can guess the kind of 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT ROOKS 35 

recreation that is necessary after such an expenditure 
of goodness as is to be found in Zarasthustra? From 
a theological standpoint — now pay ye heed ; for it is 
but on rare occasions that I speak as a theologian — it 
was God himself who at the end of his great work, 
coiled himself up in the form of a serpent at the foot of 
the tree of knowledge. It was thus that he recovered 
from being a God. ... He had made everything too 
beautiful. . . . The devil is simply God's moment of 
idleness, on that seventh day. 

"The Genealogy of Morals : 
A Polemic" 

The three essays which constitute this genealogy 
are, as regards expression, aspiration, and the art of 
the unexpected, perhaps the most curious things that 
have ever been written. Dionysus, as you know, is 
also the god of darkness. In each case the beginning 
is calculated to mystify ; it is cool, scientific, even 
ironical, intentionally thrust to the fore, intentionally 
reticent. Gradually less calmness prevails ; here and 
there a flash of lightning defines the horizon ; exceed- 
ingly unpleasant truths break upon your ears from out 
remote distances with a dull, rumbling sound — until 
very soon a fierce tempo is attained in which every- 
thing presses forward at a terrible degree of tension. 
At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps, a 
new truth shines out between thick clouds. The truth 
of the first essay is the psychology of Christianity : the 
birth of Christianity out of the spirit of resentment, not 
as is supposed, out of the "Spirit," — in all its essen- 
tials, a counter-movement, the great insurrection against 



36 ECCE HOMO 

the dominion of noble values. The second essay con- 
tains the psychology of conscience : this is not, as you 
may believe, "the voice of God in man" ; it is the 
instinct of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is una- 
ble to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here 
exposed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and 
most indispensable elements in the foundation of cul- 
ture. The third essay replies to the question as to the 
origin of the formidable power of the ascetic ideal, of 
the priest ideal, despite the fact that this ideal is essen- 
tially detrimental, that it is a will to nonentity and to 
decadence. Reply : it flourished not because God was 
active behind the priests, as is generally believed, but 
because it was a faute de mieux — from the fact that 
hitherto it has been the only ideal and has had no com- 
petitors." For man prefers to aspire to nonentity than 
not to aspire at all." But above all, until the time of 
Zarathustra there was no such thing as a counter-ideal. 
You have understood my meaning. Three decisive 
overtures on the part of a psychologist to a Tratisval- 
iiatioii of all Values. — ^This book contains the first 
psychology of the priest. 



"The Twilight of the Idols: 
How TO Philosophise with a Hammer" 



This work — which covers scarcely one hundred and 
fifty pages, with its cheerful and fateful tone, like a 
laughing demon, and the production of which occupied 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 37 

SO few days that I hesitate to give their number — is 
altogether an exception among books : there is no work 
more rich in substance, more independent, more upset- 
ting — more wicked. If any one should desire to obtain 
a more rapid sketch of how everything, before my time, 
was standing on its head, he should begin reading me 
in this book. That which is called "Idols" on the title 
page is simply the old truth that has been believed in 
hitherto. In plain English, The Twilight of the Idols 
means that the old truth is on its last legs. 



There is no reality, no "ideality," which has not been 
touched in this book (touched ! what a cautious euphe- 
mism !). Not only the eternal idols, but also the 
youngest — that is to say, the most senile : modern 
ideas, for instance. A strong wind blows between the 
trees and in all directions fall the fruit — the truths. 
There is the waste of an all-too-rich autumn in this 
book : you trip over truths. You even crush some to 
death, there are too many of them. Those things that 
you can grasp, however, are quite unquestionable ; 
they are irrevocable decrees. I alone have the crite- 
rion of "truths" in my possession. I alone can decide. 
It would seem as if a second consciousness had grown 
up in me, as if the "life-will" in me had thrown a light 
upon the downward path along which it has been run- 
ning throughout the ages. The downward path — 
hitherto this had been called the road to "Truth." All 
obscure impulse — "darkness and dismay" — is at an 
end, the "good man'''' was precisely he who was least 



38 ECCE HOMO 

aware of the proper way.* And, speaking in all ear- 
nestness, no one before me knew the proper way, the 
way upwards : only after my time could men once more 
find hope, life-tasks, and roads mapped out that lead 
to culture — / am the joyful harbinger of this culture. 
. . . On this account alone I am also a fatality. 



Immediately after the completion of the above-named 
work, and without letting even one day go by, I tackled 
the formidable task of the Transvaluatioii with a su- 
preme feeling of pride which nothing could equal ; and, 
certain at each moment of my immortality, I cut sign 
after sign upon tablets of brass with the sureness of 
Fate. The Preface came into being on 3rd September 
1888. When after having written it down I went out 
into the open that morning, I was greeted by the most 
beautiful day I had ever seen in the Upper Engadine 
— clear, glowing with colour, and presenting all the 
contrasts and all the intermediary gradations between 
ice and the south. I left Sils-Ma.ria only on the 20th 
of September. I had been forced to delay my depar- 
ture owing to floods, and I was very soon, and for 
some days, the only visitor in this wonderful spot, on 
which my gratitude bestows the gift of an immortal 
name. After a journey that was full of incidents, and 

* A witty reference to Goethe's well-known passage in the. 
Prologue to Faust: — 

"A good man, though in darkness and dismay, 
May still be conscious of the proper way." 

The words are spoken by the Lord. — Tr. 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 39 

not without danger to life, — as for instance at Como, 
which was flooded when I reached it in the dead of 
night, — I got to Turin on- the afternoon of the 21st. 
Turin is the only suitable place for me, and it shall be 
my home henceforward. I took the same lodgings as 
I had occupied in the spring, 6"^ Via Carlo Alberto, 
opposite the mighty Palazzo Carignano, in which Vit- 
torio Emanuele was born ; and I had a view of the 
Piazza Carlo Alberto and above it across to the hills. ^ 
Without hesitating, or allowing myself to be disturbed 
for a single moment, I returned to my work, only the 
last quarter of which had still to be written. On the 
30th September, tremendous triumph ; the seventh 
day ; the leisure of a god on the banks of the Po.''*' 
On the same day, I wrote the Preface to The Tivilight 
of the Idols, the correction of the proofs of which pro- 
vided me with recreation during the month of Septem- 
ber. Never in my life have I experienced such an 
autumn ; nor had I ever imagined that such things 
were possible on earth — a Claude Lorraine extended 
to affinity, each day equal to the last in its wild per- 
fection. 

"The Case of Wagner : 
A Musician's Problem" 



In order to do justice to this essay a man ought to 
suffer from the fate of music as from an open wound. 

?* A wonderful promenade along the banks of the Po, for 
which Turin is famous, and of which Nietzsche was particularly 
fond.— Tr. 



40 ECCE HOMO 

— From what do I suffer when I suffer from the fate of 
music ? From the fact that music has lost its world- 
transfiguring, yea-saying character — that it is decadent 
music and no longer the flute of Dionysus. Suppos- 
ing, however, that the fate of music be as dear to man 
as his own life, because joy and suffering are alike 
bound up with it ; then he will find this pamphlet 
comparatively mild and full of consideration. To 
be cheerful in such circumstances, and laugh good- 
naturedly with others at one's self, — ridendo dicere seve- 
rum* when the verum dicere would justify every sort 
of hardness, — is humanity itself. Who doubts that I, 
old artilleryman that I am, would be able if I liked to 
point my heavy guns at Wagner ? — Everything decisive 
in this question I kept to myself — I have loved Wag- 
ner.— After all, an attack upon a more than usually 
subtle "unknown person" whom another would not 
have divined so easily, lies in the meaning and path of 
my life-task. Oh, I have still quite a number of other 
"unknown persons" to unmask besides a Cagliostro of 
Music! Above all, I have to direct an. attack against 
the German people, who, in matters of the spirit, grow 
every day more indolent, poorer in instincts, and more 
honest ; who, with an appetite for which they are to be 
envied, continue to diet themselves on contradictions, 
and gulp down "Faith" in company with science. Chris- 
tian love together with anti-Semitism, and the will to 
power (to the "Empire"), dished up with the gospel of 
the humble, without showing the slightest signs of indi- 
gestion. Fancy this absence of party-feeling in the 
presence of opposites ! Fancy this gastric neutrality 

* The motto of The Case of Wagner. 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 41 

and "disinterestedness" ! Behold this sense of justice 
in the German palate, which can grant equal rights to all, 
— which finds everything tasteful ! Without a shadow 
of a doubt the Germans are idealists. When I was 
last in Germany, I found German taste striving to 
grant Wagner and the Trumpeter of Sakkingen* equal 
rights; while I myself witnessed the attempts of the 
people of Leipzig to do honour to one of the most 
genuine and most German of musicians, — using Ger- 
man here in the old sense of the word, — a man who 
was no mere German of the Empire, the master Hein- 
rich Schiitz, by founding a Liszt Society, the object of 
which was to cultivate and spread artful {listiget\') 
Church music. Without a shadow of doubt the Ger- 
mans are idealists. 



But here nothing shall stop me from being rude, and 
from telling the Germans one or two unpleasant home 
truths : who else would do it if I did not .'* I refer to their 
laxity in matters historical. Not only have the Germans 
entirely lost the breadth of vision which enables one to 
grasp the course of culture and the values of culture ; not 
only are they one and all political (or Church) puppets ; 
but they have also actually put a ban upon this very 
breadth of vision. A man must first and foremost be 
"German," he must belong to '•'■the race" ; then only can 
he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values 

* An opera by Nessler which was all the rage in Germany 
twenty years ago. — Tr. 

1" Unfortunately it is impossible to render this play on the 
words in English. — Tr. 



42 ECCE HOMO 

in history — then only can he establish them. , , . To be 
German is in itself an argument, "Germany, Germany 
above all,"* is a principle; the Germans stand for the 
"moral order of the universe" in history ; compared 
with the Roman Empire, they are the upholders of 
freedom ; compared with the eighteenth century, they 
are the restorers of morality, of the "Categorical Im- 
perative." There is such a thing as the writing of 
history according to the lights of Imperial Germany ; 
there is, I fear, anti-Semitic history — there is also his- 
tory written with an eye to the Court, and Herr von 
Treitschke is not ashamed of himself. Quite recently 
an idiotic opinion in historkis, an observation of Vis- 
cher the Swabian aesthete, since happily deceased, 
made the rounds of the German newspapers as a 
"truth" to which every German must assent. The' 
observation was this : "The Renaissance and the 
Reformation only together constitute a whole — the 
aesthetic rebirth, and the moral rebirth." When I listen 
to such things, I lose all patience, and I feel inclined, 
I even feel it my duty, to tell the Germans, for once in 
a way, all that they have on their conscience. Every 
great crime against culture for the last four centuries 
lies on their conscience. . . . And always for the same 
reason, always owing to their bottomless cowardice in 
the face of reality, which is also cowardice in the face 
of truth ; always owing to the love of falsehood which 
has become almost instinctive in them — in short, 
"idealism." It was the Germans who caused Europe 
to lose the fruits, the whole meaning of her last period 



* The German National Song {Dentschland, Deutschland 
uber alles). — Tr. 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 43 

of greatness — the period of the Renaissance. At a 
moment when a higher order of values, values that 
were noble, that said yea to life, and that guaranteed a 
future, had succeeded in triumphing over the opposite 
values, the values of degeneration, in the very seat of 
Christianity itself, — and even in the hearts of those sit- 
ting there, — Luther, that cursed monk, not only restored 
the Church, but, what was a thousand times worse, 
restored Christianity, and at a time too when it lay 
defeated. Christianity, the Denial of the Will to Live, 
exalted to a religion ! Luther was an impossible monk 
who, thanks to his own "impossibility," attacked the 
Church, and in so doing restored it ! Catholics would 
be perfectly justified in celebrating feasts in honour of 
Luther, and in producing festival plays* in his hon- 
our. Luther and the "rebirth of morality" ! May all 
psychology go to the devil ! Without a shadow of a 
doubt the Germans are idealists. On two occasions 
when, at the cost of enormous courage and self-con- 
trol, an upright, unequivocal, and perfectly scientific 
attitude of mind had been attained, the Germans were 
able to discover back stairs leading down to the old 
"ideal" again, compromises between truth and the 
"ideal," and, in short, formulae for the right to reject 
science and to perpetrate falsehoods. Leibnitz and 
Kant — these two great breaks upon the intellectual 
honesty of Europe ! Finally, at a moment when there 
appeared on the bridge that spanned ^two centuries of 
decadence, a superior force of genius and will which 
was strong enough to consolidate Europe and to con- 



* Ever since the year 16 17 such plays have been produced by 
the Protestants of Germany. — Tr. 



44 ■ ECCE HOMO 

vert it into a political and economic unit, with the 
object of ruling the world, the Germans, with their 
Wars of Independence, robbed Europe of the signifi- 
cance — the marvellous significance, of Napoleon's life. 
And in so doing they laid on their conscience every- 
thing that followed, everything that exists to-day, — this 
sickliness and want of reason which is most opposed 
to culture, and which is called Nationalism, — this nev- 
rose nationale from which Europe is suffering acutely ; 
this eternal subdivision of Europe into petty states, 
with politics on a municipal scale: they have robbed 
Europe itself of its significance, of its reason, — and 
have stuffed it into a cul-de-sac. Is there any one 
except me who knows the way out of this cul-de-sac ? 
Does anyone except me know of an aspiration which 
would be great enough to bind the people of Europe 
once more together ? 



And after all, why should I not express my suspic- 
ions ? In my case, too, the Germans will attempt to 
make a great fate give birth merely to a mouse. Up 
to the present they have compromised themselves with 
me; I doubt whether the future will improve them.. 
Alas ! how happy I should be to prove a false prophet 
in this matter ! My natural readers and listeners are 
already Russians, Scandinavians, and Frenchmen — 
will they always be the same ? In the history of knowl- 
edge, Germans are represented only by doubtful names, 
they have been able to produce only '■^unconscious^ ^ swin- 
dlers (this word applies to Fichte, Schelling, Schopen- 
hauer, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, just as well as to 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 45 

Kant or Leibnitz ; they were all mere weavers of 
veils).* The Germans must not have the honour of 
seeing the first upright intellect in their history of 
intellects, that intellect in which truth ultimately got 
the better of the fraud of four thousand years, reck- 
oned as one with the German intellect. "German 
intellect" is my foul air : I breathe with difficulty in 
the neighbourhood of this psychological uncleanliness 
that has now become instinctive — an uncleanliness 
which in every word and expression betrays a German. 
They have never undergone a seventeenth century of 
hard self-examination, as the French have, — a La 
Rochefoucauld, a Descartes, are a thousand times 
more upright than the very first among Germans, — the 
latter have not yet had any psychologists. But psy- 
chology is almost the standard of measurement for the 
cleanliness or uncleanliness of a race. . . . For if a 
man is not even clean, how can he be deep ? The 
Germans are like women, you can scarcely ever 
fathom their depths — they haven't any, and that 's the 
end of it. Thus they cannot even be called shallow. 
That which is called "deep" in Germany, is precisely 
this instinctive uncleanliness towards one's self, of 
which I have just spoken :, people refuse to be clear in 
regard to their own natures. Might I be allowed, per- 
haps, to suggest the word "German" as an international 
epithet denoting this psychological depravity ? — At the 
moment of writing, for instance, the German Emperor 
is declaring it to be his Christian duty to liberate the 
slaves in Africa ; among us Europeans, then, this would 



* Schleiermacher literally means a weaver or maker of veils. 
-Tr. 



46 ECCE HOMO 

be called simply "German." . . . Have the Germans 
ever produced even a book that had depth ? They are 
lacking in the mere idea of what constitutes a book. I 
have known scholars who thought that Kant was deep. 
At the Court of Prussia I fear that Herr von Treitschke 
is regarded as deep. And when I happen to praise 
Stendhal as a deep psychologist, I have often been 
compelled in the company of German University Pro- 
fessors, to spell his name aloud. 



And why should I not proceed to the end ? I am 
fond of clearing the air. It is even part of my ambi- 
tion to be considered as essentially a despiser of 
Germans. I expressed my suspicions of the German 
character even at the age of six-and-twenty (see 
Thoughts out of Season, vol. ii. pp. 164, 165), — to my 
mind the Germans are impossible. When I try and 
think of the kind of man who is opposed to me in all 
my instincts, my mental image takes the form of a 
German. The first thing I ask myself when I begin 
analysing a man, is, whether he has a feeling for dis- 
tance in him; whether he sees rank, gradation, and 
order everywhere between man and man ; whether he 
makes distinctions ; for this is what constitutes a gen- 
tleman. Otherwise he belongs hopelessly to that 
open-hearted,- open-minded — alas ! and always very 
good-natured species, la canaille! But the Germans 
are canaille — alas ! they are so good-natured ! A man 
lowers himself by frequenting the society of Germans : 
the German places every one on an equal footing. 



WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 47 

With the exception of my intercourse with one or two 
artists, and above all with Richard Wagner, I cannot 
say that I have spent one pleasant hour with Germans. 
Suppose, for one moment, that the profoundest spirit 
of all ages were to appear among Germans, then one 
of the saviours of the Capitol would be sure to arise 
and declare that his own ugly soul was just as great. 
I can no longer abide this race with which a man is 
always in bad company, which has no idea of nuances — 
woe to me ! I am a nuance — and which has not esprit 
in its feet, and cannot even walk withal ! In short, 
the Germans have no feet at all, they simply have legs. 
The Germans have not the faintest idea of how vulgar 
they are — but this in itself is the acme of vulgarity, — 
they are not even ashamed of being merely Germans. 
They will have their say in everything, they regard 
themselves as fit to decide all questions ; I even fear 
that they have decided about me. My whole life is 
essentially a proof of this remark. In vain have I sought 
among them for a sign of tact and delicacy towards 
myself. Among Jews I did indeed find it, but not 
among Germans. I am so constituted as to be gentle 
and kindly to every one, — I have the right not to 
draw distinctions, — but this does not prevent my eyes 
from being open. I except no one, and least of all my 
friends, — I only trust that this has not prejudiced my 
reputation for humanity among them ? There are five 
or six things which I have always made points of 
honour. Albeit, the truth remains that for many years 
I have considered almost every letter that has reached 
me as a piece of cynicism. There is more cynicism in 
an attitude of goodwill towards me than in any sort of 
hatred. I tell every friend to his face that he has 



4o ECCE HOMO 

never thought it worth his while to study any one of 
my writings : from the slightest hints I gather that 
they do not even know what lies hidden in my books. 
And with regard even to my Zarathustra, which of my 
friends would have seen more in it than a piece of 
unwarrantable, though fortunately harmless, arrogance ? 
Ten years have elapsed, and no one has yet felt it a 
duty to his conscience to defend my name against the 
absurd silence beneath which it has been entombed. 
It was a foreigner, a Dane, who first showed sufficient 
keenness of instinct and of courage to do this, and 
who protested indignantly against my so-called friends. 
At what German University to-day would such lectures 
on my philosophy be possible, as those which Dr. 
Brandes delivered last spring in Copenhagen, thus 
proving once more his right to the title psychologist ? 
For my part, these things have never caused me any 
pain ; that which is necessary does not offend me. 
Amor fat i is the core of my nature. This, however, 
does not alter the fact that I love irony and even 
world-historic irony. And thus, about two years before 
hurling the destructive thunderbolt of the Transval- 
uation, which will send the whole of civilisation into 
convulsions, I sent my Case of Wagner out into the 
world. The Germans were given the chance of blun- 
dering and immortalising their stupidity once more on 
my account, and they still have just enough time to do 
it in. And have they fallen in with my plans ? 
Admirably ! my dear Germans. Allow me to con- 
gratulate you. 



WHY I AM A FATALITY 

I KNOW my destiny. There will come a day when my 
name will recall the memory of something formidable 
— a crisis the like of which has never been known on 
earth, the memory of the most profound clash of con- 
sciences, and the passing of a sentence upon all that 
which theretofore had been believed, exacted, and 
hallowed. I am not a man, I am dynamite. And 
with it all there is nought of the founder of a religion 
in me. Religions are matters for the mob ; after com- 
ing in contact with a religious man, I always feel that 
I must wash my hands. ... I require no "believers," 
it is my opinion that I am too full of malice to believe 
even in myself ; I never address myself to masses. I 
am horribly frightened that one day I shall be pro- 
nounced , "holy." You will understand why I publish 
this book beforehand — it is to prevent people from 
wronging me. I refuse to be a saint ; I would rather 
be a clown. Maybe I am a clown. And I am not- 
withstanding, or rather not «<?/withstanding, the mouth- 
piece of truth ; for nothing more blown-out with false- 
hood has ever existed, than a saint. But my truth is 
terrible : for hitherto lies have been called truth. The 
Transval nation of all Values, this is my formula for 
mankind's greatest step towards coming to its senses — 
a step which in me became flesh and genius. My 
destiny ordained that I should be the first decent 
human being, and that I should feel myself opposed to 
the falsehood of millenniums. I was the first to dis- 
cover truth, and for the simple reason that I was the 
first who became conscious of falsehood as falsehood 



50 ECCE HOMO 

— that is to say, I smelt it as such. My genius resides 
in my nostrils. I contradict as no one has contradicted 
hitherto, and am nevertheless the reverse of a negative 
spirit. I am the harbinger of joy, the like of which 
has never existed before ; I have discovered tasks of 
such lofty greatness that, until my time, no one had 
any idea of such things. Mankind can begin to have 
fresh hopes, only now that I have lived. Albeit, I am 
necessarily a man of Fate. For when Truth enters the 
lists against the falsehood of ages, shocks are bound 
to ensue, and a spell of earthquakes, followed by the 
transposition of hills and valleys, such as the world 
has never yet imagined even in its dreams. The con- 
cept "politics" then becomes elevated entirely to the 
sphere of spiritual warfare. All the mighty realms of 
the ancient order of society are blown into space — for 
they are all based on falsehood : there will be wars, 
the like of which have never been seen on earth before. 
Only from my time and after me will politics on a large 
scale — exist on earth. 



If you should require a formula for a destiny of this 
kind that has taken human form, you will find it in 
my Zarathustra. 

"And he who would be a creator in good and evil — 
verily, he must first be a destroyer, and break values 
into pieces. 

"Thus the greatest evil belongeth unto the greatest 
good : but this is the creative good." 

I am by far the most terrible man that has ever 
existed ; but this does not alter the fact that I shall 



WHY I AM A FATALITY 51 

become the most beneficent. I know the joy of anni- 
hilation to a degree which is commensurate with my 
power to annihilate. In both cases I obey my Diony- 
sian nature, which knows not how to separate the neg- 
ative deed from the saying of yea. I am the first 
immoralist, and in this sense I am essentially the 
annihilator. 



People have never asked me as they should have 
done, what the name of Zarathustra precisely meant in 
my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist ; for 
that which distinguishes this Persian from all others in 
the past is the very fact that he was the exact reverse 
of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in 
the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel 
in the working of things. The translation of morality 
into the realm of metaphysics, as force, cause, end-in- 
itself, is his work. But the very question suggests its 
own answer. Zarathustra created this most portentous 
of all errors, — morality ; therefore he must be the first 
to expose it. Not only because he has had longer and 
greater experience of the subject than any other 
thinker, — all history is indeed the experimental refuta- 
tion of the theory of the so-called moral order of 
things, — but because of the more important fact that 
Zarathustra was the most truthful of thinkers. In his 
teaching alone is truthfulness upheld as the highest 
virtue — that is to say, as the reverse of the cowardice 
of the "idealist" who takes to his heels at the sight of 
reality. Zarathustra has more pluck in his body than 
all other thinkers put together. To tell the truth and 



52 ECCE HOMO" 

to aim straight : that is the first Persian virtue. Have 
I made myself clear ? . . . The overcoming of morality 
by itself through truthfulness, the moralist's overcom- 
ing of himself in his opposite — in me — that is what 
the name Zarathustra means in my mouth. 



In reaUty two negations are involved in my title 
Immoralist. I first of all deny the type of man that 
has hitherto been regarded as the highest — the good^ 
the kind, and the charitable ; and I also deny that kind 
of morality which has become recognised and para- 
mount as morality-in-itself — I speak of the morality of 
decadence, or, to use a still cruder term. Christian 
morality. I would agree to the second of the two 
negations being regarded as the more decisive, for, 
reckoned as a whole, the overestimation of goodness 
and kindness seems to me already a consequence of 
decadence, a symptom of weakness, and incompatible 
with any ascending and yea-saying life. Negation and 
annihilation are inseparable from a yea-saying attitude 
towards life. Let me halt for a moment at the ques- 
tion of the psychology of the good man. In order to 
appraise the value of a certain type of man, the cost of 
his maintenance must be calculated, — and the condi- 
tions of his existence must be known. The condition 
of the existence' of the good is falsehood : or, otherwise 
expressed, the refusal at any price to see how reality is 
actually constituted. The refusal to see that this real- 
ity is not so constituted as always to be stimulating 
beneficent instincts, and still less, so as to suffer at all 
moments the intrusion of ignorant and good-natured 



WHY 1 AM A FATALITY 53 

hands. To consider distress of all kinds as an objec- 
tion, as something which must be done away with, is 
the greatest nonsense on earth ; generally speaking, it 
is nonsense of the most disastrous sort, fatal in its 
stupidity — almost as mad as the will to abolish bad 
weather, out of pity for the poor, so to speak. In the 
great economy of the whole universe, the terrors of 
reality (in the passions, in the desires, in the will to 
power) are incalculably more necessary than that form 
of petty happiness which is called "goodness" ; it is 
even needful to practise leniency in order so much as 
to allow the latter a place at all, seeing that it is based 
upon a falsification of the instincts. I shall have an 
excellent opportunity of showing the incalculably 
calamitous consequences to the whole of history, of 
the credo of optimism, this monstrous offspring of the 
homifies optimi. Zarathustra,* the first who recognised 
that the optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist, 
though perhaps more detrimental, says: ^^Good men 
7iever speak the truth. False shores and false harbours 
were ye taught by the good. In the lies of the good were 
ye borft and bred. Through the good everything hath 
become false atid crooked from the roots. ''^ Fortunately 
the world is not built merely upon those instincts 
which would secure to the good-natured herd animal 
his paltry happiness. To desire everybody to become 
a "good man," "a gregarious animal," "a blue-eyed, 
benevolent, beautiful soul," or — as Herbert Spencer 
wished — a creature of altruism, would mean robbing 
existence of its greatest character, castrating man, and 
reducing humanity to a sort of wretched Chinadom. 

* Needless to say this is Nietzsche, and no longer the Persian. 
— Tr. 



54 ECCE HOMO 

And this some have tried to do ! It is precisely this that 
men called morality. In this sense Zarathustra calls 
"the good," now "the last men," and anon "the begin- 
ning of the end" ; and above all, he considers them as 
the most detrimental kind of men, because they secure 
their existence at the cost of Truth and at the cost of 
the Future. 

"The good — they cannot create ; they are ever the 
beginning of the end. 

"They crucify him who desireth new values on new 
tables ; they sacrifice unto themselves the future ; they 
crucify the whole future of humanity ! 

"The good — they are ever the beginning of the end. 

"And whatever harm the slanderers of the world 
may do, the harm of the good is the most calamitous of 
all harm y 



Zarathustra, as the first psychologist of the good 
man, is perforce the friend of the evil man. When a 
degenerate kind of man has succeed-ed to the highest 
rank among the human species, his position must have 
been gained at the cost of the reverse type — at the 
cost of the strong man who is certain of life. When 
the gregarious animal stands in the glorious rays of 
the purest virtue, the exceptional man must be 
degraded to the rank of the evil. If falsehood insists 
at all costs on claiming the word "truth" for its own 
particular standpoint, the really truthful man must be 
sought out among the despised. Zarathustra allows of 
no doubt here ; he says that it was precisely the 
knowledge of the good, of the "best," which inspired 



WHY I ARr A FATALITY 55 

his absolute horror of men. And it was out of this 
feeling of repulsion that he grew the wings which 
allowed him to soar into remote futures. He does not 
conceal the fact that his type of man is one which is 
relatively superhuman — especially as opposed to the 
"good" man, and that the good and the just would 
regard his superman as the devil. 

"Ye higher men, on whom my gaze now falls, this 
is the doubt that ye wake in my breast, and this is my 
secret laughter: methinks ye would call my Superman — 
the devil! So strange are ye in your souls to all that 
is great, that the Superman would be terrible in your 
eyes for his goodness." 

It is from this passage, and from no other, that you 
must set out to understand the goal to which Zara- 
thustra aspires — the kind of man that he conceives 
sees reality as it is ; he is strong enough for this — he 
is not estranged or far removed from it, he is that 
reality himself, in his own nature can be found all the 
terrible and questionable character of reality: only thus 
can man have srreatness. 



But I have chosen the title of Immoralist as a sur- 
name and as a badge of honour in yet another sense ; 
I am very proud to possess this name which distin- 
guishes me from all the rest of mankind. No one 
hitherto has felt Christian morality beneath him ; to 
that end there were needed height, a remoteness of 
vision, and an abysmal psychological depth, not 
believed to be possible hitherto. Up to the present 
Christian morality has been the Circe of- all thinkers — 



56 ECCE HOMO 

they stood at her service. What man, before my time, 
had descended into the underground caverns from out 
of which the poisonous fumes of this ideal — of this 
slandering of the world — burst forth ? What man had 
even dared to suppose that they were underground 
caverns? Was a single one of the philosophers who 
preceded me a psychologist at all, and not the very 
reverse of a psychologist — that is to say, a "superior 
swindler," an "Idealist ?" Before my time there was 
no psychology. To be the first in this new realm may 
amount to a curse ; at all events, it is a fatality : for 
one is also the first to despise. My danger is the loath- 
ing of mankind. 



Have you understood me ? That which defines me, 
that which makes me stand apart from the whole of 
the rest of humanity, is the fact that I u?imasked 
Christian morality. For this reason I was in need of 
a word which conveyed the idea of a challenge to 
everybody. Not to have awakened to these discoveries 
before, struck me as being the sign of the greatest 
uncleanliness that mankind has oa, its conscience, as 
self-deception become instinctive, as the fundamental 
will to be bliiid to every phenomenon, all causality and 
all reality ; in fact, as an almost criminal fraud in 
psychologicis. Blindness in regard to Christianity is 
the essence of criminality — for it is the crime against 
life. Ages and peoples, the first as well as the last, 
philosophers and old women, with the exception of 
five or six moments in history (and of myself, the 
seventh), are all alike in this. Hitherto the Christian 



WHY I AM A FATALITY 57 

has been the "moral being," a peerless oddity, and, as 
"a moral being," he was more absurd, more vain, more 
thoughtless, and a greater disadvantage to himself, 
than the greatest despiser of humanity could have 
deemed possible. Christian morality is the* most 
malignant form of all falsehood, the actual Circe of 
humanity : that which has corrupted mankind. It is 
not error as error which infuriates me at the sight of 
this spectacle; it is not the millenniums of absence of 
"goodwill," of discipline, of decency, and of bravery in 
spiritual things, which betrays itself in the triumph of 
Christianity; it is rather the absence of nature, it is 
the perfectly ghastly fact that anti-nature itself received 
the highest honours as morality and as law, and 
remained suspended over man as the Categorical Im- 
perative. Fancy blundering in this way, not as an 
individual, not as a people, but as a whole species! as 
humanity! To teach the contempt of all the principal 
instincts of life; to posit falsely the existence of a 
"soul," of a "spirit," in order to be able to defy the 
body ; to spread the feeling that there is something 
impure in the very first prerequisite of life — in sex ; to 
seek the principle of evil in the profound need of 
growth and expansiian — that is to say, in severe self- 
love (the term itself is slanderous); and conversely to 
see a higher moral value — but what am I talking 
about i* — I mean the moral value per se^ in the typical 
signs of decline, in the antagonism of the instincts, in 
"selflessness," in the loss of ballast, in "the suppres- 
sion of the personal element," and in "love of one's 
neighbour" (neighbour-itis !) What ! is humanity itself 
in a state of degeneration ? Has it always been in 
this state? One thing is certain, that ye are taught 



58 ECCE HOMO 

only the values of decadence as the highest values. 
The morality of self-renunciation is essentially the 
morality of degeneration ; the fact, "I am going to the 
dogs," is translated into the imperative, "Ye shall all 
go to the dogs" — and not only into the imperative. 
This morality of self-renunciation, which is the only 
kind of morality that has been taught hitherto, betrays 
the will to nonentity — -it denies life to the very roots. 
There still remains the possibility that it is not man- 
kind that is in a state of degeneration, but only that 
parasitical kind of man — the priest, who, by means of 
morality and lies, has climbed up to his position of 
determinator of values, who divined in Christian moral- 
ity his road to power. And, to tell the truth, this is 
my opinion. The teachers and leaders of mankind, 
including the theologians — have been, every one of 
them, decadents: hence their transvaluation of all 
values into a hostility towards life ; hence morality. 
The definition of morality : Morality is the idiosyncrasy 
of decadents, actuated by a desire to avenge themselves 
with success upon life. I attach great value to this 
definition. 



8 



Have you understood me ? I have not uttered a 
single word which I had not already said five years 
ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra. The unmask- 
ing of Christian morality is an event which is 
unequalled in history, it is a real catastrophe. The 
man who throws light upon it is a force majeure, a 
fatality; he breaks the history of man into two. Time 
is reckoned up before him and after him. The light- 



WHY 1 AM A FATALITY 59 

ning flash of truth struck precisely that which thereto- 
fore had stood highest: he who understands what was 
destroyed by that flash should look to see whether he 
still holds anything in his hands. Everything which 
until then was called truth, has been revealed as the 
most detrimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean 
form of life; the holy pretext, which was the "improve- 
ment" of man, has been recognised as a ruse for 
draining life of its energy and of its blood. Morality 
conceived as Vampirism. . . . The man who unmasks 
morality has also unmasked the worthlessness of the 
values in which men either believe or have believed ; 
he no longer sees anything to be revered in the most 
venerable man — even in the types of men that have 
been pronounced holy; all he can see in them is the 
most fatal kind of abortions, fatal, because they fascinate. 
The concept "God" was invented as the opposite of 
the concept life — everything detrimental, poisonous, 
and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, was 
bound together in one horrible unit^ in him. The 
concepts "beyond" and "true world" were invented in 
order to depreciate the only world that exists — in order 
that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to 
earthly reality. The concepts "soul," "spirit," and 
last of all the concept "immortal soul," were invented 
in order to throw contempt on the body, in order to 
make it sick and "holy," in order to cultivate an atti- 
tude of appalling levity towards all things in life which 
deserve to be treated seriously, i. e. the questions of 
nutrition and habitation, of intellectual diet, the treat- 
ment of the sick, cleanliness, and weather. Instead 
of health, we find the "salvation of the soul" — that is 
to say, 2ifolie circulaire fluctuating between convulsions 



6o ECCE HOMO 

and penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The 
concept "sin," together with the torture instrument 
appertaining to it, which is the concept "free will," 
was invented in order to confuse and muddle our 
instincts, and to render the mistrust of them man's 
second nature! In the concepts "disinterestedness" 
and "self-denial," the actual signs of decadence are to 
be found. The allurement of that which is detrimental, 
the inability to discover one's own advantage and self- 
destruction, are made into absolute qualities, into the 
"duty," the "holiness," and the "divinity" of man. 
Finally — to keep the worst to the last — by the notion 
of the good man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill, 
botched, and sick-in-itself , which ought to be wiped out. 
The law of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out 
of opposition to the proud, well-constituted man, to 
him who says yea to life, to him who is certain of the 
future, and who guarantees the future — this man is 
henceforth called the evil one. And all this was 
believed in as morality f—Ecrasez Vinfame I 

9 
Have you understood me ? Dionysus versus Christ. 



LB 'II 



JUL 26 19^ 



